


If my Valentine you won't be

by Iben



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 13:51:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5628889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iben/pseuds/Iben
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is spending the holidays with his family and receives a Christmas present, of sorts, that he was not expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If my Valentine you won't be

I can hear Dom banging Ariadne in the next room. Mercifully, it (he) doesn't last very long, but I'm still scarred for life. And I have to look Mal in the eye when she gets here tomorrow, knowing what I do. 

Too annoyed, or possibly disgusted, to lie there I get out of bed and pull on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, before I leave my room. The hallway is quiet. Mom and Dad are sleeping peacefully, unaware of what their eldest son is getting up to. With My Best Friend, at that! 

I head downstairs, my way guided by the multicolored lights wound around the banister. The Christmas tree, oversized and overdecorated, light up the living room. I stand in front of the fridge, there's too much to choose from, when I hear a noise and turn around. 

I nearly jump out of my skin and the undignified yelp that escapes me is silenced by a hand slapped firmly over my mouth. Eames looks, oddly enough, almost as surprised to see me as I him. My heart is beating at triple speed and I feel very much aware of my breaths hitting the warm, dry palm covering my mouth. He removes his hand then and grins, showing his endearingly crooked teeth.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” I hiss. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugs. “Well... I was just looking for some bubble wrap.” That raspy voice of his – somehow I'd managed to forget the sound of it. 

“In my parents house? In the middle of the night?” I say. “What are you really doing here? And how did you get in?”

“Your parents really need to have a look at the lock on their front door, it's just... pathetic.”

“That's breaking and entering.”

He meets my gaze. His eyes are a lovely dark shade of a color I've yet to fully determine. 

“It's Christmas. And that is a lot of food!” He looks past me into the fridge. 

I close the door. He tilts his head slightly to the side.

“No worries,” he says. “You look decidedly more appetizing.”

I make a face at him. 

“You're home for the holidays?” he says, his tone of voice conversational now. 

“Yeah. You?”

He nods. Wow, aren't we observational, I think. His parents live just a couple of blocks away. I've met them a few times, but never properly _met them_. I didn't really know him until college, where we fell in love, had lots and lots of sex and then broke up. He disappeared after that, didn't finish his degree. I did, summa cum laude. 

“Actually, I live there,” he says and makes a slightly embarrassed face.

“With your parents? Why?”

He looks at me. His face is hard to read, it always was. 

“I did a stint in rehab, then found myself without a place to stay, and no income.”

For a moment I don't know what to say. He always did like to party. It was one of the things that came between us, his lack of discipline and it's effect on mine. But it was college, I didn't think so much about it.

“I, um...”

“Forget it,” he says. 

“No, I... I'm sorry.”

“You're sorry?” He raises his eyebrows. 

“Yeah...”

It's quiet for a second, then he takes a deep breath. 

“Alright, whatever. Thank you, Arthur.”

He puts his hands in his pockets. He's wearing a black hoodie, no coat. 

“Are you better now?” I ask.

“I'm clean and sober.” He pulls something out of his pocket and fiddles with it. I think for a moment that it's a coin, and it is, but it's one of those sobriety coins. “I'm starting a course after new year's,” he says. “Carpentering.”

I feel inexplicably guilty. It's not my fault he fucked up. But at the time I was jealous of how he passed his exams and had the teachers praising his assignments and whatnot, seemingly without any effort on his part, while I worked my ass off. It wasn't fair and some small part of me thought it only right that he dropped out; it served as proof that his attitude wasn't tenable. 

“Sounds good,” I say and cringe. He knows me well enough to know that there isn't a chance in hell I'd think a course in carpentering sounds good. 

The coin disappears back into his pocket. 

“Aren't you supposed to, like, make amends,” I say, “to people you have harmed? Isn't that part of those programs?”

“And in what way did I harm you?”

His tone of voice is flat. This conversation is deteriorating quickly. 

“Actually, I did consider it,” he says before I have a chance to say anything else. “I even looked you up, but you have this blessed life. A great job, great apartment too, I assume. I was, at the most, a bump in the road for you, to your inevitable success.”

I look at him. His hair is a bit messy, like maybe he was wearing the hood before he came in. A day's worth of stubble cover his jaw. 

“Are you angry with me?” I ask. 

He sighs. “No.”

“You could always go back to college, finish your degree.”

“No, because I was expelled, and probably blacklisted everywhere else...” He shakes his head a little. “I don't really want to, either.”

“You want to be a carpenter?”

He smiles. He has a great smile, disarming, and it makes his eyes glitter. 

“Maybe. My parents are desperate for me to do something. As soon as possible. Get a job, move out, become a responsible adult.”

I smile back. “I'm sure you'll be brilliant at it, just like you are at everything else.”

“Wow. That's a whole new level of condescension.”

“No, I mean it.” I frown at him. 

He nods a little. “Enough about me,” he says. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

“Well, Ariadne is here.”

“She is?” 

“She's screwing Dom.”

“What? Oh, that's just...” He makes a face as if he finds the idea repulsive. 

“I came down here to escape the mental images.”

“They're together?”

“No. He's married, to someone else.”

“That's... I don't even know what that is.”

“Infidelity?”

“That's one. But Ariadne and Dom? Really?”

I smile at the expression on his face. 

“You learn all sorts of things on these midnight excursions,” he says. 

He must have come here to see me, whether he is willing to admit that (or even aware of it himself) or not. There's no other explanation for him breaking into my parents' house on Christmas Eve. Something flutters in my chest. 

“You want a sandwich?” I ask. 

“No, I'm good, thanks. You go ahead.”

“No, I'm not really hungry.”

We look at each other. 

“It was nice seeing you,” he says and I notice then, perhaps for the first time, that he is older than I remember him. I am too. 

“Hey,” I say, just as he is about to turn around and leave, and point up towards the doorway.

He turns his gaze in the direction of my outstretched finger, to the mistletoe.

“Oh, that's just pathetic,” he says. “We're not even standing underneath it.”

I smile. “You broke into my house.”

“You think I did that so that I'd get to kiss you underneath the mistletoe?”

“I have no idea why you did it. The way your brain works is a mystery to me.”

We look at each other. I was madly in love with him. I put up with a lot of shit, because of how crazy I was about him. It was like being caught in a whirlwind, the chaos he brought into my life. I hated it and I loved it. 

I spend my days at an office now. I get paid ridiculously well for it, but it's a little gray, I can admit that. I date, occasionally. Haven't found the right one yet, though. Now I'm at my parents' for Christmas and tomorrow's dinner is bound to be either awkward or a complete disaster, thanks to my brother and my best friend who completely lack good judgment, both of them. 

I want a kiss under the mistletoe, before that. 

Eames smiles a little and takes a step closer to me. He leans forward as I lean forward. His lips are so, so soft. His breath ghosts across my skin. 

The kiss is short, even chaste, but then we aren't dating any longer, haven't even seen each other for God knows how long. Still, it's nice. Sweet. He's as lovely as he always was. It aches a little inside and a touch of panic prickles at my hairline. Don't go there. It's not something I want to unwrap, like some damn present I didn't ask for. I stowed all those feelings away, neatly and permanently. 

But I asked for the kiss, didn't I? 

“I am sorry, you know,” he says, still in my personal space. His gaze is turned downwards. “That things...”

I look at his ridiculously long eye-lashes, his long, straight nose. And those lips. Maybe I'm not so pathetic for asking for a kiss. Anyone would. 

“Fuck,” he says. 

“It wasn't just you,” I say. “I'm sorry too.”

He turns his gaze to me. “Yeah...” 

It's so quiet I can hear the faint whirring noise of the fridge, and possibly even snow falling outside.

“Are you seeing anyone?” he asks.

“No. Are you?”

“No.”

I can't tell what he's thinking. I really wish I could. 

“Do you have any more houses to break into?” I ask. 

He smiles. “No.”

Fuck it. I kiss him again. Less chaste this time. Less like a goodbye kiss, and more of a hello. His face against mine is familiar. He tastes faintly of cigarettes when he opens his mouth and his tongue is warm and slick. 

I wrap my arms around him and feel his firm back underneath my hands, the warm skin of his neck, his soft hair. I'm getting hard.

“I remember why I came here now,” he says between kisses. “I was going to read you a poem.”

“What?” 

“It's one Hemingway wrote.”

We stop kissing, because the weirdness of the conversation sort of calls for it. 

“ _If my Valentine you won't be, I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree_.” He smiles.

“That, if something, is pathetic.”

He laughs. 

Things progress. In the heat of the moment we forget that we aren't together. Or at least I do. It feels so natural. It feels great. 

That's why I'm on my back on the couch with Eames on top of me, our pants unceremoniously pushed down to our knees to allow us to rub against each other, when I hear a loud: “Oh my God!”

I turn my head. Dom is at the foot of the stairs. He's purposefully looking away.

“Jesus Christ!” he says. 

I push at Eames to make him move off me. Being caught with our dicks out, quite literally, has a way of ruining the mood. 

Dom starts up the stairs as I get up from the couch and pull my pants up. He stops halfway.

“In our parents' living room?” he says, his brow furrowed.

The hypocrisy is mind-blowing and I glare at him.

“As opposed to your old room, and someone who isn't your wife?”

I can tell from the look on his face that he had no idea I'd heard them.

“It's not the same thing,” he says. 

“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”

I'm pissed off, but underneath that I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed in him and I'm disappointed that mine and Eames' little reunion, which was going so good, got interrupted. I can feel Eames' presence behind me. 

“My room has got a door,” Dom manages.

I hear Eames' laugh. 

“And where did he come from?” Dom makes an irritated gesture in Eames' direction.

“I'm the Santa-booty-call this year,” Eames says. “I'm stopping by every house on the street.”

Dom doesn't look amused. 

“Just..,” I start, but then I don't know how to finish. “Whatever.”

Dom looks like he might say something more, but in the end he doesn't and just continues up the stairs. 

I have to turn and face Eames. Things certainly got a bit heated, but now I feel as if I've been douched in the ice-cold water of reality.

Eames has had the good sense to tuck himself away into his pants too. 

“Don't worry about it,” he says when I can't seem to find the right words. 

I feel embarrassed. I haven't been caught in the act before, it's actually pretty mortifying. 

“I'm sorry,” I say. 

I don't even know what I'm doing. Hooking up with my ex, because that's always such a great idea, right?

We look at each other. His hair is even messier now. He's so handsome, it isn't fair. There was always a part of me that wondered what he was doing with me. Another part asked the exact opposite question. 

“I should head home,” he says. 

I nod. I feel flattened. 

“I hope Dom isn't too traumatized,” he says.

“I do. He owes me.”

Eames smile a little. 

“Do you wanna...” I don't finish the sentence, unsure of what I was going to say, or at least lacking the nerve to say it. 

It's quiet for a few, long seconds, during which Eames looks down at the floor. Then he walks up to me and gives me a soft kiss, like that first, mistletoe-kiss. I want to make it last and feel greedy or needy, or both, for it.

“It was nice,” he says. “Let's leave it at that.”

“We don't have to.”

He shakes his head a little.

“I'm a complete fuck-up.” For once his face is open. “You don't even know half of it.” 

A surge of anger comes over me. 

“So you came here, just to... what? Get laid? Gullible Arthur will surely put up,” I say.

Eames makes a skeptical face. “Now you're talking about yourself in the third person,” he says. 

“Don't.”

“I'm sorry.” He looks as if he means it. He looks confused. 

I don't say anything. I already feel exposed and rejected. If he isn't interested, I'm not going to beg. The thought of tomorrow, and the days or weeks after that, however long it's going to take to patch myself up again, is daunting. 

“Maybe...” he says, “ we could go for a walk, or something, tomorrow?”

“I wouldn't mind getting out of the house for a bit,” I say. 

“Me too.”

“Is it just you and your parents?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn't have any siblings. His parents seem nice, though. 

“You can come over if you want, too,” he says. 

I smile a little. “A walk sounds good.”

He smiles back. It's quiet for a moment. 

“I meant it,” he says then. “The poem.”

“You're gonna hang yourself from my Christmas tree?”

He smiles a little sheepishly. A warm feeling is spreading throughout my belly, though. He's telling me, albeit in a roundabout way, that he has feelings for me. 

“We'll talk tomorrow?” I say. 

He nods. He puts his hand on my cheek, his fingers gently stroking down to my jaw and then his thumb brush against my lower lip. I kind of feel like picking up where we left off before, but I settle for hugging him. His body is solid next to mine, his arms wrapped around me are strong and the smell of him fills my nose, familiar and good. 

I see as I let him out that it is snowing lightly, the snowflakes fall slowly past the halos of the streetlights. The winter air is cold against my bare arms and chills the thin material of my clothes.

“See you tomorrow,” he says. 

“Yeah.”

I meet his gaze and I can't think of anything else to say, but I smile because I can't keep myself from doing so and he smiles back. Then he heads off and when he reaches the end of our driveway I close the door. 

I have a date tomorrow, on Christmas Day. What a strange and utterly unexpected turn of events. I feel as if I might be in for another heartbreak, but then again maybe not. There are never any guarantees, I remind myself, with anyone. 

It's quiet, the whole house is sleeping. Unless Dom is lying awake, in the throes of guilt about his extramarital activities, or the horror of having witnessed two men having sex. 

I head back upstairs, to my room. I'm pissed off with Ariadne too. I invite her to my parents' for Christmas and this is what she chooses to do? I wonder what time Mal will arrive tomorrow. If things go to hell I'm getting out of here. I'll go to Eames' place and crash his and his parents' Christmas dinner. He did say I could come. I don't care that I'm an adult and maybe I'm supposed to be able to weather the storm.

I lie awake in bed for a while, staring into the shadows and thinking about Eames. I might be in love with him still. Him showing up here opened that door so easily, it took almost no effort at all. Butterfly wings beat softly against my ribs. I can picture it. Us dating again. My carpenter boyfriend coming home from work, smelling of wood and fresh sweat. It's not what I had in mind, I'll admit that, but I like the idea. I really, really like the idea of Eames.


End file.
